IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/wpaper/22549.html

Were British railway companies well-managed in the early twentieth century?

Author

Listed:
  • Crafts, Nicholas
  • Leunig, Tim
  • Mulatu, Abay

Abstract

This paper examines major privately-owned British railway companies before World War I. Quantitative evidence is presented on return on capital employed, total factor productivity growth, cost inefficiency, and speed of passenger services. There were discrepancies in performance across companies but ROCE and TFP typically fell during our period. Cost inefficiency rose before 1900 but then was brought under control as a profits collapse loomed. Without the discipline of either strong competition or effective regulation, managerial failure was common. This sector is an important qualification to the conventional wisdom that late-Victorian Britain did not fail.

Suggested Citation

  • Crafts, Nicholas & Leunig, Tim & Mulatu, Abay, 2007. "Were British railway companies well-managed in the early twentieth century?," Economic History Working Papers 22549, London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Economic History.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:wpaper:22549
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://researchonline.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/22549/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. A. J. Arnold, 1999. "Profitability and capital accumulation in British industry during the transwar period, 1913–1924," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 52(1), pages 45-68, February.
    2. Nicholas Bloom & John Van Reenen, 2007. "Measuring and Explaining Management Practices Across Firms and Countries," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(4), pages 1351-1408.
    3. David Parker, 2004. "The UK's Privatisation Experiment: The Passage of Time Permits a Sober Assessment," CESifo Working Paper Series 1126, CESifo.
    4. Foreman-Peck, James & Millward, Robert, 1994. "Public and Private Ownership of British Industry 1820-1990," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198203599.
    5. Aghion, Ph. & Dewatripont, M. & Rey, P., 1997. "Corporate governance, competition policy and industrial policy," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 41(3-5), pages 797-805, April.
    6. William N. Goetzmann & Andrey D. Ukhov, 2006. "British Investment Overseas 1870-1913: A Modern Portfolio Theory Approach," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 10(2), pages 261-300.
    7. Kennedy, William & Delargy, Robert, 2000. "Explaining Victorian entrepreneurship: a cultural problem? A market problem? No problem?," Economic History Working Papers 22377, London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Economic History.
    8. Dodgson J. S., 1993. "British Railway Cost Functions and Productivity Growth, 1900-1912," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 158-181, April.
    9. Mehdi Farsi & Massimo Filippini & William Greene, 2005. "Efficiency Measurement in Network Industries: Application to the Swiss Railway Companies," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 28(1), pages 69-90, July.
    10. McCloskey, Donald N. & Sandberg, Lars G., 1971. "From damnation to redemption: Judgments on the late victorian entrepreneur," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 9(1), pages 89-108.
    11. Crafts, Nicholas & Mills, Terence C. & Mulatu, Abay, 2007. "Total factor productivity growth on Britain's railways, 1852-1912: A reappraisal of the evidence," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 44(4), pages 608-634, October.
    12. Nickell, Stephen & Nicolitsas, Daphne & Dryden, Neil, 1997. "What makes firms perform well?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 41(3-5), pages 783-796, April.
    13. Greene, William, 2005. "Reconsidering heterogeneity in panel data estimators of the stochastic frontier model," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 126(2), pages 269-303, June.
    14. Broadberry,Steve N., 2005. "The Productivity Race," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521023580, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Nicholas Crafts & Timothy Leunig & Abay Mulatu, 2008. "Were British railway companies well managed in the early twentieth century?1," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 61(4), pages 842-866, November.
    2. Crafts, Nicholas, 2011. "British Relative Economic Decline Revisited," CEPR Discussion Papers 8384, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    3. Crafts, Nicholas, 2012. "British relative economic decline revisited: The role of competition," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 49(1), pages 17-29.
    4. repec:ehl:wpaper:27889 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. repec:ehl:wpaper:22553 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Brian Mitchell & David Chambers & Nick Crafts, 2011. "How good was the profitability of British railways, 1870–1912?," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 64(3), pages 798-831, August.
    7. Crafts, Nicholas & Mills, Terence C. & Mulatu, Abay, 2007. "Total factor productivity growth on Britain's railways, 1852-1912: A reappraisal of the evidence," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 44(4), pages 608-634, October.
    8. Bogart, Dan, 2010. "A global perspective on railway inefficiency and the rise of state ownership, 1880-1912," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 47(2), pages 158-178, April.
    9. Banfi, Silvia & Filippini, Massimo, 2010. "Resource rent taxation and benchmarking--A new perspective for the Swiss hydropower sector," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(5), pages 2302-2308, May.
    10. Mehdi Farsi & Aurelio Fetz & Massimo Filippini, 2007. "Benchmarking and Regulation in the Electricity Distribution Sector," CEPE Working paper series 07-54, CEPE Center for Energy Policy and Economics, ETH Zurich.
    11. Zhang, Lin, 2017. "Correcting the uneven burden sharing of emission reduction across provinces in China," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 335-345.
    12. Massimo Filippini & Luis Orea, 2014. "Applications of the stochastic frontier approach in Energy Economics," Economics and Business Letters, Oviedo University Press, vol. 3(1), pages 35-42.
    13. Federico Belotti & Silvio Daidone & Giuseppe Ilardi & Vincenzo Atella, 2013. "Stochastic frontier analysis using Stata," Stata Journal, StataCorp LLC, vol. 13(4), pages 718-758, December.
    14. Valeria Cosmo, 2013. "Ownership, Scale Economies and Efficiency in the Italian Water Sector," Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade, Springer, vol. 13(3), pages 399-415, September.
    15. Richard Dion & Robert Fay, 2008. "Understanding Productivity: A Review of Recent Technical Research," Discussion Papers 08-3, Bank of Canada.
    16. Hugh Goldsmith, 2014. "The Long-Run Evolution of Infrastructure Services," CESifo Working Paper Series 5073, CESifo.
    17. Joanne Evans & Massimo Filippini & Lester C Hunt, 2011. "Measuring energy efficiency and its contribution towards meeting CO2 targets: estimates for 29 OECD countries," Surrey Energy Economics Centre (SEEC), School of Economics Discussion Papers (SEEDS) 135, Surrey Energy Economics Centre (SEEC), School of Economics, University of Surrey.
    18. Farsi, Mehdi & Filippini, Massimo, 2009. "An analysis of cost efficiency in Swiss multi-utilities," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 306-315, March.
    19. Massimo Filippini & Lester C. Hunt, 2013. "'Underlying Energy Efficiency' in the US," CER-ETH Economics working paper series 13/181, CER-ETH - Center of Economic Research (CER-ETH) at ETH Zurich.
    20. Thomas Triebs & Subal C. Kumbhakar, 2012. "Management Practice in Production," ifo Working Paper Series 129, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich.
    21. Mehdi Farsi & Massimo Filippini, 2005. "A Benchmarking Analysis of Electricity Distribution Utilities in Switzerland," CEPE Working paper series 05-43, CEPE Center for Energy Policy and Economics, ETH Zurich.
    22. Russ Kashian & Nicholas Lovett & Yuhan Xue, 2020. "Has the affordable care act affected health care efficiency?," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 58(2), pages 193-233, December.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • L92 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities - - - Railroads and Other Surface Transportation
    • N73 - Economic History - - Economic History: Transport, International and Domestic Trade, Energy, and Other Services - - - Europe: Pre-1913

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ehl:wpaper:22549. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: LSERO Manager on behalf of EH Dept. (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/chlseuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.